#sorry im years late to the party people have probably already dug this apart to death

[stolasgoetia-alt]

Every time i rewatch Blitzo’s hallucination sequence in Truth Seekers i notice more.

Like, on a base level-

The steps to Stolas are difficult and slippery to climb at first, but the path clears as he climbs.

Stolas’s positioning and framing not only call out their significant class differences but also frame Stolas in a sort of heavenly position, at the top of an elegant marble stairway to heaven. Furthering a few things- it posits Stolas as something unattainable, something holy, something that might lead to good, but also something too good for him?

As he climbs the steps he is cleaned of the grime of his previous guilt and he regains himself (loses his clown outfit and appears how he usually does)- but in doing so he also becomes shackled in golden chains to stolas.

The chains being a reminder of what he fears about any relationship including with stolas- being ‘shackled’ (commitment-related issues) and then also, specifically, and importantly here- being seen as just a plaything to stolas.

Stolas is the most clear and realistically depicted of the characters in Blitzo’s hallucination. Closer than even Blitzo himself. Every other figure of his life that comes to taunt him is distorted. Not even Moxxie, who is in the room with him, comes close- even after his depiction shifts, he is in drag. What does this say? I think in part it furthers the fact that Stolas here seems to represent a kind of escape for Blitzo from the torment of everything else (but at what cost- i.e. the shackles).

AND something ELSE i noticed is that on his forehead for the majority of the hallucination Blitzo’s forehead mark is a clear broken heart. But on the steps to stolas it returns to its usual appearance. This is another way in which he regains his usual self, but also, this change specifically could speak to the potential of his heart healing?

Blitzo of course does not appear to be comfortable in the dynamic that hallucination-Stolas has brought him into, once he reaches Stolas, but even still, he snaps at Moxxie, which reads to me as that he wants to stay undisturbed in the moment. Maybe he thinks that that sort of power dynamic is the best that he would ever get or deserve.